Dear colleagues,

We would like to invite you to the reform brunch organized for the diplomats, representatives of international institutions and foreign correspondents “Replacement of CEC Members with Expired Terms as Key Milestone of Electoral Reform”, which will be held on Tuesday, October 4, at 12pm at the RPR office (6 Olhynska str., office 21).

Why replacing the 12 CEC members whose terms expired in 2014 is important for Ukraine?
– Why replacements have not been done so far?
– What can be done to accelerate replacements?
– Which further reforms are needed to strengthen independence and impartiality of the CEC as electoral management body?

These and other issues will be discussed by the speakers:

– Olha Aivazovska, Head of the Board at the Civil Network OPORA
– Denys Kovtyzhenko, Senior Legal Adviser at IFES-Ukraine

Working language of the event will be English.

We look forward to meeting you soon!

Background information:

The terms of office of 12 out of 15 members of the Central Election Commission (CEC) expired in June 2014. However, since then no actions have been taken to replace the members with the expired term for a long time. In late 2015 and early 2016, all the party and MP groups in the Rada proposed their candidates for the CEC. In June 2016, Pres. Poroshenko finally proposed to terminate the powers of the 12 CEC commissioners and suggested 11 candidates to replace them. However, the strong majority of the candidates are affiliated with the ruling coalition parties, i.e. Petro Poroshenko Bloc and People’s Front. Four parliamentary party groups are not represented among the President-proposed candidates, namely Oleh Liashko’s Radical Party, the Opposition Bloc, Will of the People, and Batkivshchyna. If the parliament agrees on the proposed candidates, a strong majority on the CEC will be controlled by the ruling parties, while CEC most likely would not be independent electoral management body as required by the international standards and best practices. However, the parliament fails to either approve or reject the proposed CEC candidates, thus failing to replace the Commissioners with expired terms. The current situation, i.e. failure to replace 12 CEC Commissioners in a transparent manner to ensure CEC independence and impartiality, violates the internationally recognized principle of legal certainty, opens the door to political interference with the work of the incumbent Commissioners, and is inconsistent with the international standards.

In addition to urgent replacements of the 12 CEC members, there is a strong need for creating the legal mechanisms aimed to prevent the same problems in the future, as well as to further strengthen the CEC as a representative, impartial, independent and effective electoral management body. The respective legal reforms should be considered immediately once the new 12 CEC members are appointed by the Rada.

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